Religion booknotes

...Nhat Hanh (Thich is a title for Vietnamese Buddhist monks) is, after the Dalai Lama, the best-known Buddhist monk in the West...

...One can learn much by simply turning the pages, admiring the illustrations, and perusing the quite readable, albeit brief, resumes of the various movements and persons...

...He had been a forceful opponent of those who thought that revelation comes from two sources, Scripture and Tradition—a view repudiated at Vatican II only a few years before...

...Scholars have not been slow to see ecumenical implications, both with respect to Orthodoxy and the churches of the Reformation, in that papal language...

...The Christian Orthodox East accepts only the first eight as truly ecumenical...

...When faced with disagreement or harm from others or threats of violence a certain mindfulness helps us overcome anger in order to find peace...

...King continues his story in the period after the Reformation (he also discusses Lutheran and other reformed attempts to keep alive a quasimonastic ideal) and brings his narrative into the twentieth century...

...Nor does the twentieth-century chapter (which sprawls all over the place from great figures of our time to lightweights like Matthew Fox) resume the story...

...There are certain books in which one finds a ring of authenticity...

...Within such reflection one can find the faintest link between contemplation and action...

...Let this complaint not be seen as pedantic academic carping...

...Western Monasticism: A History of the Monastic Movement in the Latin Church Peter King Cistercian Publications, $24.95, 482 pp...

...He left Vietnam because of his involvement in antiwar activities in the 1960s but is still unwelcome by the current Vietnamese regime...

...As de Lubac understands it, the word "tradition" is not a mere historical record, but the continuing acceptance and retrieval of the Word of God...

...To cite one example: he insists that when we eat we should eat with an awareness of where food comes from, who gleaned it, who prepares it, and for what reason it is consumed...

...King also treats the tension in the early modern period between the monastic life devoted to scholarship (for example, the Maurists) and other forms of monastidsm centered on penance and contemplation...

...In the midst of these factual recitations are narratives of great interest...

...His constant thesis is that a meditative approach to quotidian life is found not only in the meditation hall—although he thinks such practice a good one—but in an alertness, a being awake in the ordinary course of life...

...This emphasis is crucial for Jewish-Christian dialogue...

...The most striking feature of this book is its beautiful layout...

...Such omissions, to be sure, are sadly inevitable in a volume which seeks completeness but cannot reach it...

...A reader might then be tempted to turn to other works to supplement what is available here...

...Regarding that latter task, he touches on the expansion of monastidsm in Africa...

...That book has now been reissued by Crossroad in the Herder & Herder series "Milestones in Catholic Theology" under the title Scripture in the Tradition, which more accurately reflects the French original...

...King is a clear writer who has managed to put a vast amount of material into one volume...

...In other words, for de Lubac Scripture and Tradition come together "to form one thing and move as to one goal" as Vatican II puts it (Dei verbum...

...What he did very much intend to demonstrate was that the Christian tradition, as Saint Paul forcefully shows, has always read Scripture as a whole and as a living unfolding of the purpose of God...

...His deep conviction is that such awareness is a path to greater amity and authentic inner peace...

...Nhat Hanh's writing is deceptively simple...

...Those interested in this crucial strand of the Catholic experience will find the book a valuable addition to their personal libraries while teachers may find it useful as a resource for their classes in church history...

...The bibliography too is a mixed bag of sources, with many works not cited in the best or most recent editions...

...A well-published scholar on matters monastic, he directs his survey with a sure hand...

...The term "Word of God" has both a plain sense and one which suggests the constant encounter of the community and the Word...

...These volumes, which print the texts of the councils in their original languages along with facing English translations, should be in the library of every serious theological reader...

...The early desert ascetics in Christianity thought anger to be one of the worst of the "deadly" sins...

...I read this volume mainly to be better acquainted with a person Thomas Merton admired...

...Therefore, it is encouraging that when de Lubac, in the second and third sections of this volume, discusses the dual testaments and the Christian "newness" there is no sense of supersessionism, no argument that Judaism has been "replaced" by Christian revelation...

...The book has an excellent introduction by Peter Casarella, who provides not only a historical account of how the book came to be, but also a context for the current debates between those who favor the primacy of the historical-critical method of Scripture study and those who feel that a too exclusive reliance on that method runs the risk of turning Scripture into a mere historical artifact...

...But, citing Yves Congar, who raised the issue a generation ago, Tanner cautions against calling all of those, especially the medieval ones, fully ecumenical...

...Nhat Hanh keeps an image of Jesus next to the Buddha on the altar in his hermitage in France where, in a place called Plum Village, he maintains a meditation center...

...In describing them, Tanner sets the context in which they were convoked and, in passing, describes and defines the nomenclature used in conciliar deliberations...

...King has an excellent chapter on monastic women in the High Middle Ages...

...King's book begins with the early desert tradition and moves quickly to the penetration of ascetic ideals in the West...

...There are so many excellent resources for the study of spirituality, it is a shame that such a handsome volume fails to draw attention to them...

...The bad news is that someone wishing to follow up on a particular author would get almost no help from the very inadequate section titled "Further Reading...

...I was disappointed that he did not discuss the inculturated attempts to develop monastidsm in India by such adventurous persons as Bede Griffiths and Henri LeSaux...

...He highlights some of the great spiritual masters of the time, and provides a powerful page on the Russian icon with particular attention to Andrei Rublev's mystical classic, The Old Testament Trinity...

...I found myself, in the end, admiring Hanh also...

...the modern councils, which would embrace Trent and the two Vatican councils...

...The Councils of the Church is written for beginners, but even for seasoned church historians it is a good reminder about the crucial role councils have played...

...The monk's teaching rests on his Buddhist acceptance of a metaphysics (I hesitate to use the word "theology") that is...

...It is almost a coffee-table book—with boxed features of important persons, lavish color illustrations, helpful timelines, concise highlights of a given period, and nice biographies of individuals for each particular tradition...

...Given Tanner's fine style, his command of the conciliar tradition, and the importance of councils both as history and as potential instruments for future church reform and ecumenical activity, this volume is a must read...

...The introduction to Scripture in the Tradition recommends that we read this precis of his much larger project slowly, because de Lubac, with his unparalleled comCommonweal 28 September 28, 2001 mand of the sources, provides much to ponder...

...Some years ago in this column I reviewed Karl Frank's Of Greater Liberty (Cistercian Publications), which was advertised as a history of monasticism but which was, in truth, a more general study of religious life (the so-called vita regularis—"life under a rule...

...In the last few years of his life, Merton used Nhat Hanh's poetry as subject matter for some monastic conferences which he gave on Sunday afternoons to the community at Gethsemani...

...Henri de Lubac was aghast when, in 1968, he saw a book of his appearing in English under the title The Sources of Revelation...

...King gives a brisk account of monasticism in relation to Jansenism and has a fine chronicle of the romantic impulses that led Dom Gueranger to found Solesmes in the nineteenth century after buying an abbey with his own funds...

...It was a good but, of necessity, somewhat sketchy survey...

...To exercise such awareness is to expand our conscious sense of the links which bind us to the earth, to others, and to needs...

...Tanner divides his history of the councils into three large groupings: the early councils...

...Tanner cites a letter Paul VI wrote in 1974 to Cardinal Willebrands in which the pope calls some of the medieval councils "general councils of the West" rather than ecumenical...

...Scripture in the Tradition Henri de Lubac Crossroad/Herder & Herder, $29.95, 244 pp...

...The book does have a decent index...

...Every theologian is indebted to British Jesuit Norman Tanner because of his superb editorial work on the two-volume Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Georgetown, 1991...

...It is a curious volume in that it cobbles together chapters of books that de Lubac had previously published...

...That being said, however, there are elements in Nhat Hanh's reflections which help us to deepen some elements in the Christian spiritual tradition...

...How enriched grace before meals would be, for example, if one not only spoke of gratitude but called to mind where food comes from and how it got to our table...

...In fact, the more generic practice of reflecting on the unfolding of one's day is a contemplative exercise that goes all the way back to the desert tradition of monasticism...

...To the believing community that listens and seeks to understand it, the Word of God provides nourishment and reveals the Living God...

...Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame...

...He is also quite fair in his consideration of the impact of German Benedictines on the development of American church life in general and the Benedictine presence in particular...

...the medieval ones (the five councils held at the Lateran in Rome...

...If there is one solid achievement of historical-critical research, as John Meier has vigorously demonstrated, it is to emphasize Jesus within the world of Second Temple Judaism...

...Given the page constraints of the volume, he cannot take the story into the twentieth century to describe the great coterie of Russian writers connected to the Saint Sergius seminary in Paris...

...In exile from his native Vietnam for more than thirty years, he now lives in France...

...With a sensitive understanding of this debate, Casarella, following de Lubac, warns against excesses on both sides...

...I note the caveats above not because these ideas are prominent in the anthology of texts in this volume but only as a salutary alert for those who think that one can transpose easily the worldview of another tradition into one's own...

...De Lubac never intended that the Christian world turn its back on historical-critical approaches to Scripture...

...Tanner's current book can be read as a vade mecum to those volumes because, as the subtitle indicates, it supplies a historical overview of all the major councils, from Nicaea in the early fourth century to Vatican II...

...After an introduction on Jesus and the origins of Christian spirituality, ten chapters trace the story of Christian spirituality, in both its Western and Eastern manifestations, from the patristic period to the twentieth century...

...Readers may best know his work Living Buddha/Living Christ (1995) which gives a sympathetic portrait of Jesus from a Buddhist perspective...

...Scripture in the Tradition contains three long chapters which treat, in order, the spiritual understanding of Scripture, the dual testaments, and the Christian newness...

...The Councils of the Church: A Short History Norman Tanner Crossroad, $22.95, 132 pp...

...This volume excerpts readable selections from Nhat Hanh's more than twenty books...

...In fourteen pages, Hackel takes us from the conversion of Russia in the late tenth century down to the beginnings of the twentieth century...

...Let me end, however, on a more upbeat note: the volume does have a very good index, always a boon at a time when indixes tend to get short shrift...

...He has chosen nine other contributors, mainly from the U.K., among them the excellent hagiographer David Farmer...

...I first became aware of him in 1966 through his friendship with Thomas Merton...

...Its topics included not only monks but canons, mendicants, and other groups...

...Readers will gain much pleasure, as I did, from simply browsing...

...It is the same Word, de Lubac writes, "brought forth by the Virgin who had been brought forth by the prophets long ago...

...of spirituality, is the general editor of The Story of Christian Spirituality...

...The good news about this book is that it is attractive...

...The Middle Ages presents a complex picture if only because, deriving from the reforming impulses of Gregory VII (himself a monk), various experiments developed...

...He knows that what God has revealed to Israel is part of the seamless whole which is God's Commonweal 29 September 28,2001 Word...

...Gordon Mursell, a British theologian who has written widely on the history Commonweal 27 September 28, 2001 The Story of Christian Spirituality Edited by Gordon Mursell Fortress, $35, 384 pp...

...The author intended this short book to make accessible his thinking on the spiritual exegesis of the Scriptures, which he laid out in formidable detail in his four-volume history of medieval exegesis (now, thankfully, being translated into English) and in his excellent study of Origen's exegesis...

...This is one of them...

...For example, after the seventh chapter on "Catholic Saints and Reformers," we are sent to two authors who have written slim, and not very authoritative, books on Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross...

...Nor is Christian salvation simply equivalent to the Buddhist concept of liberation...

...He does justice not only to the Benedictine thread of monastic observance but also to the Celtic tradition which had its own ethos...

...in my estimation, incommensurable with Christian ideas...

...Sergei Hackel, to cite one example, has an illuminating chapter on "The Russian Spirit...

...In terms of technique, Hanh's notion of mindfulness leading to compassion is similar to the Christian tradition of living in the presence of God emphasized by Lawrence of the Resurrection, De Caussade's "sacrament of the present moment," and Therese of Lisieux's practice of doing the ordinary in an extraordinary fashion...

...Peter King's book, by contrast, indicates a more precise focus: a history of monasticism in the Latin West...

...He does not consider the development of the monastic life in the Christian East, a topic deserving a volume in its own right...

...Catholics tend to count twenty-one councils as ecumenical...

...Thich Nhat Hanh: Essential Writings Edited by Sister Annabel Laity Orbis,$15,163 pp...

...This is, of course, a complex story replete with names, places, and various institutions...

...The list fails to note that both saints are well served by excellent translations of their own works with fine introductions...

...The volume concludes with a brief bibliography and an adequate index...

...The essence of Nhat Hanh's teaching is to encourage the practice of mindfulness, awareness, or keeping the present moment (he uses all these terms) as a way of cultivating a life of peace and the quintessential Buddhist virtue of compassion...

...There is a profound gulf between the Buddhist doctrine of the "noself" {anatta) and biblical notions of each human being made in the image and likeness of God...

...It is in this age, from the late eleventh century on, that we get not only the vast network of Cluniac houses, Cistercian reforms, and attempts to combine the eremetic and cenobitic life (for example, the Camaldolese and the Carthusians), but also dual monastic houses of men and women, as well as various other religious orders which had their Commonweal 26 September 28,2001 moment in history...

...Commonweal 30 September 28,2001...

...Similarly, the Christian doctrine of creation is very unlike the Buddhist concept of the rise and maintenance of the phenomenal world...

...King tells us that his research was done in Scotland with the books available to him, so keen students of the monastic life will be disappointed by his somewhat pedestrian bibliography...

...We learn of the attempt to keep alive the monastic life in tandem with the missionary ideal, first exemplified by the early medieval monks and renewed in modern times...